The various national champs coming up this weekend show its been around a long time, the French champs were first held in 1902 and Belgium from 1910.
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Note the triumphant musical background. Well before the John Tesh days of synth soundtracks to TdF coverage. I love it.Indeed it started in France. In Dutch it's called "veldrijden" which translates to "field riding"... you can take that quite literally as that was the exact origin. There were no fabricated obstacles. Just a course on a farmer's field, with creeks running through them where they'd need to jump over etc. I'm looking for a really early video i once saw, but i can't seem to find it. I did find one of the 1950s, but the one i was looking for was even earlier.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beXa5iDJENE
Sounds like commentary by Eamon Andrews.Note the triumphant musical background. Well before the John Tesh days of synth soundtracks to TdF coverage. I love it.